How Sydney’s property market was transformed in my 12 years of Title Deeds

The summer of 2013 started much like any other: 140 bushfires burned across the state, Vance Joy’s song Riptide topped Triple J’s Hottest 100, and Sydney’s median house price nudged an all-time high of $670,000.

As an international housing affordability study slammed Sydney as “severely unaffordable”, yours truly filed her first Title Deeds column revealing that Crown chairman James Packer was selling his Bondi Beach bachelor pad for $22 million so he and his wife Erica could move to their Vaucluse matrimonial home.

James Packer’s Bondi Beach bachelor pad was the star listing of early 2013 at $22 million.Credit:

James Packer and former wife Erica Packer ahead of their planned move to the La Mer mansion in Vaucluse.Credit: Photographic

Sydney’s median house price is now almost $1,655,000, Packer and Erica are no longer a thing, nor Packer and Crown, and no one moved into that matrimonial mansion until 2015 when businessman Chau Chak Wing bought it sight unseen for $70 million.

Through it all I’ve been writing the Title Deeds column in The Sydney Morning Herald, revelling in the paper trail behind property records, shell companies and trusts to find out who and how much money is behind our most expensive real estate.

But not any more. This is my last column before I hand over the pen to my colleague Tawar Razaghi, freeing me to join the Herald’s investigations team led by Kate McClymont.

But first, a look back at some of the most momentous, and ridiculous, property stories during one of the most transformative periods in Sydney’s property history.

Fan favourites

How it started: Mike Cannon-Brookes bought his Palm Beach getaway in 2013 for $8.7 million.Credit: Domain

Few have served the pages of Title Deeds as well as Mike Cannon-Brookes as he put his name to one of the country’s most extraordinary and extensive luxury home portfolios.

Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes, CEOs and founders of Atlassian Software.Credit: Louise Kennerley

Back in 2013, the “accidental billionaire” had just two local forms of shelter: an apartment in Lilyfield and a converted warehouse in Paddington, known as the House of Desks. He added a Palm Beach weekender mid-year for $8.7 million.

Since then, there’s been the Double Bay phase that landed him three houses, and the Pittwater period which netted a handful of holiday houses from Newport to Coasters Retreat, leaving local holiday homeowners with soaring land tax rates.

The Southern Highlands stage has been more enduring, stockpiling farms from Kangaloon to Nattai, and that’s before we get to the $100 million Fairwater estate in Point Piper.

The estate of Lady (Mary) Fairfax sold Fairwater for $100 million in 2018.Credit:

His Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar took a somewhat more humble approach. He paid $71 million (cash, again) for a doer-upperer next door to Fairwater, and because it was to be a family home, John B. Fairfax lopped a few million dollars off the price rather than take a higher offer from a developer.

Having reduced Elaine to a gutted shell during his seven years of ownership, Farquhar sold it a few months ago for $130 million to a mystery buyer who is already said to be hatching plans for a carve-up of the estate. Maybe don’t tell Fairfax.

The listing, sale, attempted renovation and resale of the Point Piper estate Elaine has loomed large over property reporting for more than a decade.Credit:

Humble Scott has since moved into the Scottish baronial mansion up the road called Uig Lodge, paying $130 million cash.

The Atlassian mates are in good company when it comes to Sydney’s pantheon of trophy home collectors. Millennials such as William Wu and husband-wife rag traders Daniel and Georgia Contos have wowed us with their insatiable appetite – and budget – for high-end mansions, and Jen Hawkins has proved real estate pays even better than being a supermodel.

The Spanish Mission mansion Alcooringa was sold by flipper Stephanie Conley-Buhre for about $80 million.Credit: Jamie Brown

But no one holds a candle to Stephanie Conley-Buhre, who made a capital gain of $50 million this year when she sold her Spanish Mission mansion Alcooringa after just three years. Who needs the bank of mum and dad? Although, it didn’t hurt.

Financier Owen Chen must have been as shocked as the rest of Sydney by the late-night arson attack on his vacant, heritage-listed mansion in Northwood. As firefighters battled to contain the blaze from spreading to surrounding houses, Chen watched from the street alongside his neighbours, no doubt wondering who would do such a thing.

The morning after Owen Chen’s Northwood mansion was set alight.Credit: Eva Barry

Turns out it was his former associate Steve Nassif. Still, Chen’s penchant for the neighbourhood remains. He and his family have eight houses at last count, of which one is yet to be approved to be rebuilt anew.

Will Vicars is known to appreciate the oceanfront real estate between North Bondi and Tamarama.Credit: Edwina Pickles

Billionaire Will Vicars has a tendency to buy anything left empty along the Bondi to Tamarama walk, bar tzar Justin Hemmes likes a crash pad near all his pubs, whereas WiseTech billionaire Richard White is inspired not so much by location as by the heart.

And who can forget John Changjin Li? He showed us the only thing worth more than a gold mine in Indonesia is a wife with residency and a house in Point Piper. Li’s company exchanged to buy Edgewater for $95 million in 2020 and is yet to complete the deal.

Robin Khuda’s data centre giant he founded, AirTrunk, sold recently for $24 billion, so he might have more time for his side hustle as a Manly and Palm Beach property developer, if not his slew of Mosman homes.

It’s been an eventful three years since John Li purchased one of the country’s most expensive houses.Credit:

Ian Malouf was an avowed renter when his Dial-a-Dump business was acquired for $578 million. His conversion came in 2021, at which point he zealously bought half a dozen properties from Double Bay to Palm Beach, and a $60 million city pad.

Where are they now?

Just as Sydney’s trophy homes are a bellwether of a person – or industry’s – rising stocks, so too are they when their stocks fall.

Ron Medich is nicknamed Cottees after the “rich ‘n’ thick” ice-cream topping.Credit: Mick Tsikas

One of property tycoon Ron Medich’s mates used to take umbrage when I referred to him as an “alleged murderer” after charges were laid for masterminding the shooting of his former business partner Michael McGurk. How dare I.

At the time, Medich – nicknamed “Cottees” after the “Thick ‘n’ Rich” ice-cream topping – was secretly trying to sell a Point Piper house at the centre of a loan dispute between him and Adam Tilley. His then real estate agent had the brainwave of listing it on property portals with no address on the ad.

The waterfront house once at the centre of a loan dispute between Ron Medich and Adam Tilley was firebombed in the years before it sold for $10.65 million.Credit: Domain

So sneaky, no one will ever know who owns it, except that everyone knew because there are only so many houses that come with the opprobrium of being firebombed.

Listed for $16 million, it sold two months later for $10.65 million to property oracle Bruce McWilliam, who undertook a fantastic paint job before he sold it five years later for $32.5 million. It’s all right for some.

Odetta Medich was last heard from on the French Riviera.Credit: Sasha Woolley

A year later, Medich’s luxury home at the end of Point Piper was sold for $37 million, much to his ex-wife Odetta’s delight, who took off for Beaulieu-sur-Mer on the French Riviera. Medich was last heard serving his maximum 39-year sentence at Lithgow Correctional Centre.

Few flew as high as Xu Jiayin, chairman of one of China’s once largest property developers, Evergrande. He slipped into town during China’s Golden Week holiday in 2014 to buy Julia Ross’ Point Piper home, Villa del Mare.

It was all meant to be hush-hush given his lack of residency and such, but flying in on a private jet and arriving at the inspection in a cavalcade of limousines might have given something away. That, or the fact the $39 million sale was the largest of that year.

China Evergrande founder Xu Jiayin was forced to sell Villa del Mare in 2015.Credit:

Ultimately, shelf companies registered to the British Virgin Islands don’t offer lots of privacy if they’re still registered to the Evergrande headquarters.

Evergrande Group’s Xu Jiayin has not been seen in public in more than a year.Credit: Che Liang

A year later, Xu became a poster boy for then treasurer Joe Hockey’s crackdown on foreign buyers when he ordered Villa del Mare be forcibly sold, and Darling Harbour local Lola Li Wang was on hand to take the keys.

More recently, things have not gone well for Xu. Evergrande was ordered into liquidation early this year, and Xu has not been seen in public since he was taken away by Chinese authorities a year ago.

Hockey took exception to another wealthy developer from China, “Sam” Guo Kuizhang, known as the “Chinese Gatsby” to his Hunters Hill neighbours. He bought the heritage estate Windermere for $11.85 million in 2014 amid assurances he would build a second house on it, as per the terms of his Foreign Investment Review Board approval.

But Guo never did build the second house, and instead cleared the adjoining bush reserve, spray-painting over Indigenous artwork. He left town soon afterwards, and took with him $19 million for the estate. Thanks for coming.

Sam Guo at one of his parties at the Windermere estate in Hunters Hill, before he sold it for $19 million.Credit:

Sydneysiders knew we’d finally made it as a global city in 2015 when China’s then ninth-richest man, JD.com founder Richard Liu Qiangdong, bunkered down in a $36 million Vaucluse house recently vacated by Leonardo Di Caprio.

Liu didn’t just fall in love with the harbour setting. He also fell for influencer “Nancy” Zhang Zetian, known on social media as “Sister Milk Tea”. They married in 2015. He was 41, she was 22, and to add to the romance he bought her a $16.2 million apartment in the Stanford Residences at The Rocks.

By 2018, the couple realised our “global city” was a long way from the rest of the planet. Goodbye to the Vaucluse house for $38 million, and ouch to the $13.5 million firesale of Zhang’s apartment at The Rocks.

Nancy Zhang Zetian sold her Stamford Residences apartment for a multimillion-dollar loss.Credit: Pascal Le Segretain

The couple is still going strong, despite some awkwardness when Liu became a target of China’s #MeToo movement after a former Minnesota university student accused him of rape, an allegation Liu denied, and settled out of court.

Huang Xiangmo made lots of friends among Labor and Liberal fundraising types when he moved to Sydney, settling on his $12.8 million Mosman home in early 2013. So imagine their shock when their generous donor had his visa cancelled by ASIO amid claims of being a covert agent of influence, of all things.

Huang Xiangmo at his palatial Mosman home before he was refused Australian citizenship.Credit: James Brickwood

Now that he is exiled in his $HK520 million townhouse in Hong Kong, Huang’s wife “Fiona” Huang Jiefang will find it tricky if she wants to sell the Mosman home. Freeze orders remain lodged on title as the Tax Office seeks $140 million in unpaid tax.

Packer came up trumps in the end. In 2013, as Packer was planning to sell his bachelor pad, then premier Barry O’Farrell signed off on Crown’s plans for a second casino atop a tower on the CBD’s western harbourfront. I mean, would people pay to live in a casino, above an industrial wasteland known as the Hungry Mile?

James Packer paid $72 million for his two-storey apartment in Crown’s Barangaroo tower.Credit:

Yes, they would. Packer negotiated to buy a thumper of a pad in the Barangaroo tower for $72 million, only for Crown then to be sold to US private equity giant Blackstone for $9 billion, lining Packer’s pockets by $3.3 billion.

Crown is now worth far less, but Packer began this year by paying $105 million to have the family’s Bellevue Hill estate, Cairnton, signed over to his corporate interests.

Oh, and that Bondi Beach bachelor pad eventually sold for $29 million to Medich’s brother and nephew Roy and Anthony Medich.

End of an era

As Sydney’s high-end market limps to the end of a torrid few months, the federal government has passed the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing (AML/CTF) Amendment Bill.

This does not sound glamorous, and it is certainly not usual Title Deeds fodder, but for those who take issue with buyers using real estate to launder illicit funds it is an early Christmas gift.

What this legislation does is expand laws first introduced in 2007 so that real estate agents and other “tranche 2” entities such as lawyers and accountants will be obliged not only to understand where a buyer’s funds are coming from, but report any suspicious matters.

Until now, why would an agent report something like, say, a buyer trying to pay a house deposit using a suitcase full of cash – as was known to happen on occasion. After all, that might threaten the sale, the commission, and don’t agents work for the vendor anyway?

From mid-2026, agents will have to report such things, or risk a fine or civil penalty.

Finally, thank you to the people who tipped me off, especially those whose names never appeared in the column. Keep them coming.